Economic MPC-based planning for marine vehicles: Tuning safety and energy efficiency

Energy efficiency and safety are two critical objectives for marine vehicles operating in environments with obstacles, and they generally conflict with each other. In this paper, we propose a novel online motion planning method of marine vehicles which can make trade-offs between the two design objectives based on the framework of economic model predictive control (EMPC). Firstly, the feasible trajectory with the most safety margin is designed and utilized as tracking reference. Secondly, the EMPC-based receding horizon motion planning algorithm is designed, in which the practical consumed energy and safety measure (i.e., the distance between the planning trajectory and the reference) are considered. Experimental results verify the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed method.